Robots, Robots, Everywhere (at San Francisco Startup Launches)

With two hardware accelerators inadvertently scheduling back-to-back launch days, following STEAM Carnival’s successful weekend event, these past seven days in San Francisco have been a bit of a startup party.

The new robot startupsin town, introduced by the HAX accelerator on Tuesday and by the Highway1 accelerator on Wednesday, are: Dispatch Robotics:The company’s autonomous delivery cart, Carry, is designed to travel on sidewalks and in bike lanes for local deliveries—the kind currently handled by on-demand services like GrubHub and Instacart.

(Also see my colleague Evan Ackerman’s analysis of a competing bot by Starship Technologies.) UpDroid:UpDroid is the latest entry in a long list of robots intended for people who simply want to mess around with robots, rather than dedicated robots intended to perform a specific task right out of the box.

The founders of UpDroid, out of Carnegie Mellon, say their robot is special, though, not only because the hardware can be tweaked by snapping in different sensor modules, or because it runs the open-source operating system ROS and has a browser-based interface that allows users to get started immediately developing software in Python—but because at under $1000 (probably closer to $800, its founders say) it is going to be the cheapest full-featured ROS robot on the market.

How to Make a Robot &#8211; Lesson 1: Getting Started

Getting Started Welcome to the first installment of the Grand RobotShop Tutorial, a series of 10 lessons that will teach you how to make your own robot.

Although this might seem pretty basic, even people with previous robot building experience might find useful information regarding the general method of building a robot.

We loosely define a robot as follows: Robot: An electromechanical device which is capable of reacting in some way to its environment, and take autonomous decisions or actions in order to achieve a specific task.

On the other hand, a vacuum cleaner that can navigate around a room, or a solar panel that seeks the sun, can be considered as a robotic system.

It is also important to note that the “robots” featured in Robot Wars for instance or any solely remote controlled device would not fall under this definition and would be closer to a more complex remote controlled car.

If you are unsure of what you want your robot to do or simply want to concentrate your efforts on specific tasks, here are some ideas: In order to build increasingly complex robots, most professionals and hobbyists use knowledge they have acquired when building previous robots.

Robotics incorporates aspects of many disciplines including engineering (mechanical, electrical, computer), sciences (mathematics and physics) and arts (aesthetics) and users are free to use their imagination.

Although many competitions are specifically for students (elementary to university), there also exist open competitions where adults and professionals alike can compete.

In addition to the service areas such as cleaning, surveillance, inspection and maintenance, we utilize these robots where manual task execution is dangerous, impossible or unacceptable.

In this exercise, we have chosen to make a mobile platform in order to get an understanding of motors, sensors, microcontrollers and programming, and to include a variety of sensors.

On Monday, January 21, 2019

Yelawolf - Till It’s Gone

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Jugs and Rods | Critical Role RPG Episode 94

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In the Belly of the Beast | Critical Role RPG Show Episode 54

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Thorium.

Thorium is an abundant material which can be transformed into massive quantities of energy. To do so efficiently requires a very different nuclear reactor than the..